High Energy Physics - Theory

These notes are based on six lectures given over three days at the Pre-Strings 2026 school in Shanghai. Day 1 develops neural network essentials, organized around the expressivity, statistics, and dynamics of neural networks, presented with…

We develop a data-driven framework based on Neural ODEs that learns the bulk metric functions and the $U(1)$ gauge potential of a static, planar-symmetric black hole from boundary fermionic spectral functions. After validating the framework…

We study giant graviton-like D3-branes as probe configurations in type IIB supergravity backgrounds AdS$_5\times$SE$_5$, with emphasis on the structure of the five-dimensional Sasaki-Einstein manifolds SE$_5$. These configurations wrap…

Solvable time-dependent systems provide important settings for studying non-equilibrium physics, where exact results are rare. They are also useful for benchmarking quantum simulations, which can directly probe real-time dynamics beyond the…

We use the Poincare parametrization of AdS space to develop a general BRST-BV approach for free fields. A general expression for the BRST-BV Lagrangian of fields with arbitrary masses and symmetry types is obtained. We apply this general…

Starting from the gauge invariant action for free string field theory with boundary recently constructed in 2506.05969, we define new gauge invariant observables which are analogous to the Brown-York charges of General Relativity. Just like…

We formulate an avatar of the Fyodorov-Hiary-Keating conjecture for black hole microstate counts in quantum gravity. By holography, this implies sharp bounds on interval counts of high-dimension primary operators in conformal field theory.…

We compute some supersymmetric twists of field theories in twistor space, including the minimal supersymmetric and the chiral algebra twists of supersymmetric self-dual Yang-Mills, and the minimal twist of $\mathcal{N}=1$ self-dual…

In our recent work, arXiv:2604.11474 [hep-th], we have shown that effective detection of gravitons is possible using an array of charged harmonic oscillators in a dynamical electromagnetic field. Using the interaction Hamiltonian of the…

We show that linearised E theory possesses a local symmetry at low levels provided the parameters of the local symmetry obey differential conditions that restrict their dependence on the extended spacetime. In the decomposition of E theory…

Quantum magic is a fundamental resource that quantifies to what extent quantum states can be efficiently simulated on a classical computer. We study it for states constructed from the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) Hamiltonian with $N$ Majoranas…

Typicality arguments for emergent spacetime rely on the Lubkin-Page bounds, which show that generic quantum states have vanishing correlations between subsystems. These bounds assume a tensor-product Hilbert space (a Type~I von~Neumann…

We revisit the zero-transcendentality sector of bosonic string effective amplitudes with spin-1 external states, conjectured to correspond to a mass-deformed $(DF)^2$ theory, known as the $(DF)^2{+}\text{YM}$ theory. Imposing gauge…

We show that two paradigmatic systems, the planar Kepler--Coulomb problem and the Landau problem on the hyperbolic plane $H^2$, are connected by a common one-dimensional mediator: the Morse Hamiltonian. On the Kepler side, a Liouville…

The efficient preparation of correlated thermal states, such as the Thermofield Double (TFD) state, is a fundamental prerequisite for simulating quantum gravity models and many-body thermodynamics on quantum processors. In this work, we…

We present a canonical quantization of Jackiw-Teitelboim gravity with finite Dirichlet boundary conditions, using the geodesic length between the two boundaries and its conjugate momentum as reduced phase space variables. The dynamics is…

We propose that the Krylov basis gives a semiclassical representation of dynamics in general large-$N$, complex, many-body systems. As a probe of this semiclassicality, we study the growth of Wigner negativity -- a measure of the complexity…

We study the fusion of two conjugate conformal line defects on the sphere. At small separation, their spectrum is governed by a universal Fusion Master Equation. Below a critical coupling, the fused defect has two conformal fixed points; at…

We introduce a field-theoretic algorithm to find the $SL(2,\mathbb{Z})$ duality web of 3d $\mathcal{N}=4$ circular quiver theories with unitary gauge groups, extending the algorithm for linear quivers. Although circular and linear quivers…

As Coleman famously argued, the apparent breakdown of partition-function factorization in quantum gravity associated with Euclidean wormholes is a red herring, arising from a hidden average over an ensemble of theories. We present a direct…